The Totally New Yearsy, But Not Even A Little Hungover, Story Of Mostly Purple Patty And The Itsy Bitsy Spaceship

In our world, The X Files premiered in September of 1993, ran for 9 years, had a complex & rather confusing alien conspiracy mythology and was a very popular and successful show on the Fox Network. It was heavily inspired by Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

In another reality, the series was a direct (though two decades later) spinoff from Kolchak, ran for 10 years, had an entirely different background mythology, premiered in September of 1996 and was even more popular & successful.

All of the same regular actors appeared in the same roles, but The Smoking Man was played by William B. Davis only through the first five seasons, after which he was played by a series of younger actors. Davis returned for the final 5 episodes of the series. Smoking Man was a dangerous wild card who, on any given episode, might be helping the cultists, the aliens, the Illuminati. He would help Mulder & Scully if it served his purposes.

Darren McGavin, who played Carl Kolchak, guest starred in a total of seven episodes during the first four years of the series.

The Lone Gunmen were a part of the series right from the start and were part comic relief, part expert help.

The mythology of the series, which made up about a third of the 320 episodes, was less about alien invasion (although that was part of it) and more about the attempts of a worldwide cult to return the Elder Gods to Earth. Failed attempts by the cultists were used to explain the fact that certain supernatural creatures were on our world. The aliens both aided and opposed the cultists. It was alien technology, mostly of a biological nature, that was used to explain some of the mutants that appeared throughout the series.

Among the different episodes that we never got to see in our reality were ones about dragons (“Wyrm”), a rakshasa (“The Kolchak Hunter”), intelligent apes (“Neosimian”) and a real superhero (“The Night Girl”). As it is in our world, the hands down creepiest X Files episode was “Home”.

Eugene Tooms, the mutant who could squeeze through tight spaces, appeared in four episodes before he died in Season 7.

The final five episodes wrapped up the mythology by having the aliens, who were now cut off from their home world, helping Mulder, Scully and Smoking Man defeat the cultists ultimate attempt to summon the Elder Gods. Most of the aliens, Smoking Man, a few mutants and a Mulder clone (from the 7th season episode “Redlum”) die. The last scene showed Mulder and Scully from behind, walking down a country road, talking about how they were getting too old for this crap.

Three motion pictures were made after the series ended. All of them did well at the box office.